WHAT FUNDAMENTAL PROPERTIES SUFFICE TO ACCOUNT FOR THE MANIFEST WORLD? POWERFUL STRUCTURE

Sharon Ford (2010). WHAT FUNDAMENTAL PROPERTIES SUFFICE TO ACCOUNT FOR THE MANIFEST WORLD? POWERFUL STRUCTURE PhD Thesis, School of History, Philosophy, Religion & Classics, The University of Queensland.

       
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Author Sharon Ford
Thesis Title WHAT FUNDAMENTAL PROPERTIES SUFFICE TO ACCOUNT FOR THE MANIFEST WORLD? POWERFUL STRUCTURE
School, Centre or Institute School of History, Philosophy, Religion & Classics
Institution The University of Queensland
Publication date 2010-01
Thesis type PhD Thesis
Total pages 288
Total black and white pages 288
Subjects 21 History and Archaeology
Abstract/Summary This Thesis engages with contemporary philosophical controversies about the nature of dispositional properties or powers and the relationship they have to their non-dispositional counterparts. The focus concerns fundamentality. In particular, I seek to answer the question, ‘What fundamental properties suffice to account for the manifest world?’ The answer I defend is that fundamental categorical properties need not be invoked in order to derive a viable explanation for the manifest world. My stance is a field-theoretic view which describes the world as a single system comprised of pure power, and involves the further contention that ‘pure power’ should not be interpreted as ‘purely dispositional’, if dispositionality means potentiality, possibility or otherwise unmanifested power or ability bestowed upon some bearer. The theoretical positions examined include David Armstrong’s Categoricalism, Sydney Shoemaker’s Causal Theory of Properties, Brian Ellis’s New Essentialism, Ullin Place’s Conceptualism, Charles Martin’s and John Heil’s Identity Theory of Properties and Rom Harré’s Theory of Causal Powers. The central concern of this Thesis is to examine reasons for holding a pure-power theory, and to defend such a stance. This involves two tasks. The first requires explaining what plays the substance role in a pure-power world. This Thesis argues that fundamental power, although not categorical, can be considered ontologically-robust and thus able to fulfil the substance role. A second task—answering the challenge put forward by Richard Swinburne and thereafter replicated in various neo-Swinburne arguments—concerns how the manifestly qualitative world can be explained starting from a pure-power base. The Light-like Network Account is put forward in an attempt to show how the manifest world can be derived from fundamental pure power.
Keyword dispositional properties
categorical properties
Foundation-Monism
light-like network
categoricalism
causal theory of properties
new essentialism
conceptualism
identity theory of properties
Harré
Additional Notes This Thesis is already set up as a book. New Sections and New Chapters begin only on odd pages.

 
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